U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan of Pennsylvania denied this week that he sexually harassed a much younger aide, though he acknowledged that he had a deep “affection” for her. This is a non-story. A bunch of fake news baloney. It is clearly a he said/she said situation — he said that she was his “soul mate,” and she said that calling her that made her uncomfortable, but who are you going to believe? A happily married Congressman or his assistant, who by her own admission asked him to grab an ice cream with her?

He said he felt “invited” to express his romantic feelings to the aide as they shared ice cream after work, and that he hoped that by expressing his feelings the two could prevent the situation from becoming inappropriate.

I mean, exactly! Everyone knows that the best way to avoid a romantic relationship is by expressing those romantic feelings! Haven’t you ever heard of banging one out to get it out of your system? Isn’t this how everyone exorcises a crush?

Meehan said he told the aide “that I was a happily married man and I was not interested in a relationship, particularly not any sexual relationship, but we were soul mates.

I mean, Pat told her that he didn’t want a sexual relationship. He should get a medal for that! And yet there she was, licking that ice cream in front of God and who knows else. I mean, how was he supposed to feel? She asked him to ice cream! In what world is that not an invitation to a romantic relationship? If anyone should be upset here, it’s Pat, because she led him on. I mean, if she’d gotten that ice cream in a dish, then maybe there might be some ambiguity. But it was an ice cream cone, and we all know what that means.

It means extra long hugs, right?

After professing his feelings to her one night last spring in Washington, he said, they exchanged a hug, as he said they often did, but “maybe longer that night than needed to be.”

Meehan confirmed the outline of the Times story, which said the married 62-year-old expressed his romantic desires to his aide after she began a serious relationship with someone else, then grew hostile when she did not reciprocate.

Uh, of course Pat lashed out at her when she began dating another man. I mean, why wouldn’t he? She had — by inviting him out to ice cream — made an implicit promise to have a non-sexual, romantic relationship with him. There’s nothing wrong with that! They were soul mates, and everyone knows that men are allowed freebie passes with their “soul mates.” It’s not like Pat was having an emotional affair with just any old woman off the street. This was the woman he was meant to be with if not for that pesky “time and circumstance.”

There’s a social contract between older men and their younger subordinate soul mates — there’s an understanding that a sexual relationship is forbidden, but that the younger woman continues to make herself exclusively emotionally available to the older man. Who else is he going to complain to about his loveless marriage?

He said that he sought to remain loyal to his wife, and that he used his office funds to settle the harassment claim so he and the aide could move on and keep the issue private.

I mean, obviously he wanted to keep this private! Even though men are perfectly allowed to have emotional affairs with their much younger subordinate soul mates, you don’t want to advertise that to your wife. Why hurt her feelings over the matter? It’s not her fault that she’s not Meehan’s soul mate. He married the wrong person. That’s all. There’s no crime in that. Obviously Pat didn’t want to rub it in by using money from his own bank account — which he shares with his wife — to settle a “harassment” lawsuit. Why punish his wife? This is what the taxpayers are for! Ensuring the emotional health of their paid representatives!

Later, he recounted how after he and the aide spoke, Meehan visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and found the names of two soldiers, one named Meehan and another with her surname, near one another on the wall. “As I traced the monument with my finger, I wondered who they were and why their plans ended so sadly and abruptly. As we travel our paths together, I am comforted that there is more unwritten,” he wrote.

There’s nothing creepy about that at all. Nope. Nothing at all.

See?! There’s nothing to see here, and I don’t know why this is a big deal to anyone. I mean, the President of the United States had an affair with a porn star and she wasn’t even his soul mate! It’s all much ado about nothing.